By Compiled by Andy Warren

on July 28, 2014 10:43 AM

An Episcopal priest, his wife and their 5-year-old son were found bludgeoned and stabbed to death in their west Houston apartment on Feb. 2. Their other son, Isaac Tiharihondi, was arrested in Mississippi and charged in the slayings. less

The January 2014 shooting deaths of Maoye Sun,50, his wife, Mei Xie, 49, and their two young sons in their Cypress home made headlines around the globe and shook Houston’s Chinese-American community.

The family was found dead about 7:30 p.m. Jan. 30 in their home in the 14000 block of Fosters Creek Drive.

Authorities said the couple was last seen on Jan. 24. The boys, Timothy Xie Sun, 9, and Titus Xiao Sun, 7, last attended school at Sampson Elementary the day before.

Different theories have swirled around the crime, like a case of mistaken identity or a contract killing. News reports abroad popped out stories about a murder arranged overseas. But investigators won't join in the speculation about possible motives or any specific theories.

The execution-style shooting deaths of a Spring couple and four of their five children on July 9, 2014, in their home sent a shockwave through the community. It became worse when authorities named a relative as the suspected killer.

Authorities say 33-year-old Ronald Lee Haskell went to Katie and Stephen Stay’s home while searching for her sister, his ex-wife.

The Stays and their five children were bound and shot in the head. Only 15-year-old Cassidy Stay survived. Wounded, she managed to tell police that the gunman was heading to her grandparents’ home a few miles away.

Police intercepted Haskell, taking him into custody after a short vehicle chase ended in a nearby suburban cul-de-sac and turned into a hours-long standoff. He collapsed in court on July 11, and his defense attorney suggested he may plead insanity.

Today, it’s a small gated community subdivided into 13 million-dollar-plus houses. But in the 1980s, this property on Todville Road was where William Gerald “Bill” List built his mansion. And it’s the site of sexual abuse and murder.

One night in October 1984, four young men staying in the mansion shot the 57-year-old businessman with his own gun. List had a record of sexually molesting teenage boys.

Elbert Ervin "Smiley" Homan pleaded guilty to pulling the trigger in November 1985. He’s serving life at the Terrell Unit in Rosharon.

List's death was not the only violent incident in his family's history. His daughter, Deborah Thornton, was killed in a notorious pickax murder committed by Karla Faye Tucker in 1983. Tucker was executed in February 1998.

The story behind the List mansion and this Seabrook site surfaced in April 2014 when a renter demanded out of his lease.

The murder of two Waltrip High School girls became one of the most notorious crimes in modern Houston history.

Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, were taking a shortcut home in the dark on June 24, 1993, when they came across Cantu and his gang, known as the Black and Whites, during an initiation near T.C. Jester Park.

The gang members spotted the girls, dragged them into nearby woods and sexually assaulted them. Then they dragged their victims deeper into the woods where, at Cantu’s urging, they beat, choked and stomped them to death.

Cantu was the third gang member executed. Two of the six had their death sentences commuted to life after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. A 14-year-old was given a 40-year sentence.

Above, the girls' friend, Christina Almaraz, hugs Adolfo Pena after Cantu's execution on Aug. 17, 2010, in Huntsville. "We can say it’s the end," the father said. "But it’s never going to be closure."

The Clear Lake mother drowned her five children on June 20, 2001, in a bathtub.

Yates was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 after being convicted of capital murder for the deaths of Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke 2; and Mary, 6 months.

In this photo, flanked by her lawyers George Parnham, left, and Wendell Odom, Andrea Yates reacts on July 26, 2006, after she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in a second murder trial granted by an appeals court.

Yates, who turned 50 in July 2014, remains at Kerrville State Hospital.

Certainty and relief finally came to the victims’ families when one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history died of prostate cancer on Sept. 21, 2007, in a Michigan hospital at age 53.

Watts is believed to have killed as many as 80 women during the 1970s and early '80s.

A guilty plea to aggravated burglary in Houston was supposed to put him away for 60 years, but victims’ relatives learned in 1992 that Texas' mandatory release laws would allow Watts to walk out of prison in 2006. Lack of evidence kept Harris County prosecutors from pursuing murder charges against him. In exchange for immunity and the plea agreement for burglary, Watts confessed to killing 13 women in Texas.

The confession allowed Texas authorities to clear many unsolved homicides, freed a man who was wrongly convicted of killing one of Watts' victims and caused a woman's manner of death to be changed from suicide to homicide.

"You hate to be happy when someone dies and is in that much pain, but he has caused so much grief for so many families for so many years that you can't help but be relieved," Harriet Semander, whose 20-year-old daughter Elena was killed by Watts in Houston, said at the time of his death in 2007.

Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler made headlines herself when she reenacted the Jan. 13, 2003, crime, straddling her co-prosecutor, with his arms and legs tied to the actual death bed.

The prosecution contended that the former stripper and mom of two seduced her 34-year-old husband, tied him to the bed and jabbed his head, neck, chest and genitals.

Above, Siegler makes Wright look at a photo of her husband's body during court proceedings March 2, 2004, in Houston. She initially got 25 years. A retrial in November 2010 cut five years off her prison sentence.

Right up to the end, he continued to proclaim his innocence in the Nov. 13, 1992, killing of his adoptive parents, sisters and brother-in-law inside their modest Spring Branch home. Houston police had him in custody four days later.

His roommate, Jared Althaus, made a secret recording of Coulson: "I'm your alibi; you're my alibi. ... They don't have any leads. We can do anything we want to in this world."

Authorities over the years have tried to link suspects to the "killing fields," but so far, there's been no real breakthrough.

In a recent case, a jury on March 28, 2014, found Clyde Hedrick, 60, guilty in a woman's 1984 death from League City. Prosecutors linked Hedrick to the "killing fields," but he was not charged in any of those killings.

One of the unsolved cases led Tim Miller, shown above, to create Texas EquuSearch. His 16-year-old daughter, Laura, was one of four girls whose bodies had been dumped at the site in 1986.

The Friends­wood dentist who made national headlines a decade ago after she ran over her cheating husband will spend at least another year behind bars. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied her April 2013 bid for early release.

In 2002, Harris and her orthodontist husband had a successful string of dental offices, until she became suspicious of his philandering.

She tracked 44-year-old David Harris and his mistress to the Nassau Bay Hilton on July 24, 2002. And while his 17-year-old daughter from another marriage was in the car, Clara Harris ran him down in the parking lot.

A private investigator hired by Clara Harris to follow her husband was in the hotel parking lot and videotaped the crime.

In 2007, Harris, pictured with with attorney Dean Blumrosen, was ordered to pay her dead husband's parents, Gerald and Mildred Harris, $3.75 million in a wrongful-death suit.

Sixteen-year-old Benton admitted fatally stabbing the 15-year-old, saying it was in self-defense. After one mistrial, she pleaded guilty in 2007 to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in exchange for five years of deferred adjudication. In September 2009, a judge ended her probation early.